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Leave it to the Weinsteins to issue an interlaced Blu #-o

Definitely going to wait for reviews of The Killer now - anyone know if the French plan to rerelease it on Blu? Anyone?

Apparently the French 36 Chambers isn't so hot either, a poster at AVS Forum says there's some nasty Gladiator-style "scratch removal" and it seems to have been heavily cropped.

There was a report going around that the upcoming release of THE KILLER was sourced from a PAL master and upconverted. Apparently, this came from their Facebook page. According to Dragon Dynasty's twitter, it was a false alarm:

"Correction - the KILLER master is HD, not PAL. This is the last time the social media guy gets to answer a technical question..."

The Fanciful Norwegian wrote:Apparently the French 36 Chambers isn't so hot either, a poster at AVS Forum says there's some nasty Gladiator-style "scratch removal" and it seems to have been heavily cropped.

If you already own some Wild Side discs, they have quite a heavy hand on noise-removal and dust-removal, sometimes giving their DVDs a "blurry" touch, which is kind of their "trademark".

Of course, they're no Criterion, and the masters are what they are, given the money they have.

But here, considering what they already did on the SD version of the 36th chamber boxset, considering the French BR reviews (I don't own them so I can't tell it by myself, but I've seen the 1st movie playing on HD in a FNAC store), I would say that their HD edition is quite good.

http://www.filmsactu.com/test-blu-ray-t ... n-8580.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.excessif.com/dvd/test-image/ ... 8-760.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Captures from the Dragon Dynasty DVD of The Killer:

http://www.hkfilm.net/dvdrevs/killer2.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.hkfilm.net/dvdrevs/killer.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The "review" (if it can fairly called one) misses a pretty big elephant in the room, namely that 96 minutes is the PAL/50Hz running time. A poster over at Blu-ray.com has confirmed that the BD is 1080i29.97, so this is almost definitely going to be another 36th Chamber-style botch job -- but at least with 36th Chamber they got the DVD right!

For all of DD's problems, transfers were something they usually got right -- they managed to release proper NTSC versions of their Shaw Brothers titles (Five Deadly Venoms, One-Armed Swordsman, King Boxer, etc.) even though the R3 releases weren't -- but I guess those days are over.

Dragon Dynasty should just give up and let other companies do the job correctly. How many releases do they botch per year? At least 95%? This should have been as simple as letting Criterion do proper restoration and releasing them. How many times can companies screw releasing these 2 films?

Another poster at the BR forum has put up caps of the Blu and it's indeed another botch like the 36th Chamber Blu.

http://forum.blu-ray.com/3054751-post241.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Don't think they'll be third time lucky with the Fist of Legend Blu - I'm holding on to my DVD for sure. Re The Killer: perhaps the Germans or the French will do this film right in 1080p as their DVDs had the best A/V (just a shame they weren't English-friendly).

Oddly enough, the DVD of Return to the 36th Chamber turned out fine (http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/DVDRevie ... hamber.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;).

Unsurprising, but still disappointing.

I was at my local Future Shop today and saw this sitting on the shelf. When I looked on the back, it staed 1080p, not 1080i. This was a Canadian edition (released by Alliance, not Weinstein), but it had the same cover and features. Is this a misprint, or error; or is it possible that the Canadian version is actually 1080p?

Alliance always issues substandard blu-rays, but this time even if they issued their own disc it would be better than the atrocious DD disc.
I think Alliance distributes Weinstein in Canada, hence the slightly different artwork.

I thought you were going to say that Dragon Dynasty should have spent just $10,000 more and bought the new Oppo XP7000 Telecine Machine, and everything would've been awesome.

No, i was going to say that DD should hire me as their Blu-ray producer and telecine supervisor.

Mr Finch wrote:Captures from the Dragon Dynasty DVD of The Killer:

http://www.hkfilm.net/dvdrevs/killer2.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.hkfilm.net/dvdrevs/killer.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I was considering the DVD since the Blu is getting so many bad reviews, but that is one shitty looking comparison pic that actually sells me more on the Fox Lorber image. #-o

Second time lucky for The Killer on Blu-Ray? The new disc comes courtesy of Kam & Ronson, has English subs and is due May 3.

The impression I get from reading other forums is that Kam & Ronson's Blu-rays haven't been true HD, but rather SD upconverts, so I'm not holding out much hope that their The Killer Blu-ray is going to be any different.

Their Blu-Ray of Yoji Yamada's 2010 film About My Brother from last year was proper HD but I couldn't say about other titles. What worries me is that it's a single layer disc and that subtitles on previous releases of older HK films have been merely okay rather than genuinely good. I certainly wouldn't recommend blind-buying The Killer at this stage but surely it's got to be better than the DD travesty.

I didn't know about that release. I think I should've been more specific and said their releases of older Hong Kong films, because those releases are the only ones I've read up on. At least, if the run time is correct, the K&R release will not be sped up like the terrible DD release.

Finch wrote:Second time lucky for The Killer on Blu-Ray? The new disc comes courtesy of Kam & Ronson, has English subs and is due May 3.

Here

Pre-order for Bullet in the Head is also up; same specs, same distributor.

Some caps comparing the new HK Blu of The Killer with the awful US disc have been posted here (scroll halfway down). The Hongkong disc retains the grain (no excessive DNR) but is slightly cropped on the left and right and doesn't look like genuine HD either.

That is bad, but it is what I expected.

I am at risk of getting flamed but I'm going to ask this anyway: Is there a problem with the aspect ratio on this disc? I recently found a used copy of Hard Boiled at a used book store for about $10. I checked out the disc and packaging and every seemed pretty legit. I’ve dealt with some Criterion bootleg’s in the past and this didn’t seem like one. So I bought it. When I got it home and played it I noticed the picture throughout looked like it was stuck in a small box in the middle of my screen. I use a PS3 as my Blu/DVD player and have a large flatscreen so it was very weird. I’ll try to post pictures later but to those out there who own the OOP disc was this how it always looked? Or did I somehow pick up a really good bootleg?